Sunday, March 12, 2017

Schedule week of Mar 13

This was an interesting week in that it did not follow my training plan yet it resulted in an especially intense leg stress. I am sure the leg punishment will come back as a noticeable increase in strength and speed.

The idea of planning by TSS rather than duration is that the numbers include intensity. TSS = duration x intensity. But there are ways to stress muscles that do not register the kind of intensity TSS represents. Strength training is a good example. My Thursday morning hour in the gym was not nearly as exhausting as a brisk three mile run, yet it had a big negative impact on my legs. Soreness rather than fatigue. Those sore muscles are unwilling to work the next day even though I do not feel fatigued. Let's just say the fatigue is focused on the muscles we worked, so any activity that requires them will be less successful.

Thursday evening happened to be yoga workshop with a guest instructor, and it was another hard workout. I got through it, but my legs were on fire. My Wednesday swim got cancelled due to a semi-annual dental check-up. Friday night the family planned on going out to dinner to celebrate my birthday (67!), so I could only do one of the two workouts originally planned for Friday. Swim, or bike. Seeing how this was a bike focused week and my TSS was already falling behind plan, I decided to pile on the legs and do a max effort interval set on Tantalus. Simple, warm up the do 3 x 5 min all out with plenty of recovery in between. I knew my legs were tired so intensity and duration were up for compromise. Right away I decided to shorten the work interval to four minutes, but left the intensity as an all out effort.

One thing I learned from this is that the new Trainingpeaks workout builder over estimates TSS for intervals like these. It assumes I will hit the high effort instantly and hold it steady throughout the work interval. What happened to me, Friday and again Sunday, is that when I ramp up to the desired power my speed increases, which unloads my legs, which makes the power drop. You could say there is a technique aspect to this. Another thing I noticed today and probably affected me Friday is that I set my Edge to display 30 sec power. Many triathletes recommend this to minimize chasing after wild fluctuations. The problem with this setting and doing intervals is that during transition, up and down, the display lags. I would overshoot the start of the work interval and drop below target when it ended. Next time I will use a three sec setting.

On Friday night I knew my legs were too cooked to run safely Saturday morning, so I traded my planned 10 mile run for something I have never done, a climb up Koko Head Crater. I expected a steep walk up and down, so having to prace from trestle to trestle was a surprise. Even so I think it was a perfect follow-up to the previous two days.

I already mentioned how I suspect the Trainingpeaks workout builder over estimates TSS. My Sunday bike workout suffered from that and lingering soreness and fatigue. I was supposed to do two rounds of 10 reps, 1:30 at sweet spot and 0:30 well above sweet spot. I targeted 150 watts for SS and 185 for the harder part. I only managed six in the first round, and three in the second. So instead of getting 96.8 TSS as planned I only got 49.4.

All this helps explain why I missed my TSS goal by so much, yet ended the weeks with very tired legs.

You can see this represented in today's ramp rate charts.

I have a nice progression since the first of the year, but this week lacks the bump I usually get from the long run and long bike. Still not where I was training for Honu last spring!

Last week

ATP: 700 TSS
Planned: 736.3
Actual: 359.8

This Week

Week of 3/13 - Base 3 Week 4

Focus: R&R, the Saturday run will take precedence over the Sunday bike.